Ready to Create a

Business You Love?

THE Membership Site

for Virtual Assistants

Created for VAs. By VAs.

Let Us Help You Create YOUR Dream Business –

The Membership Site for VAs.

Would you love to build your Virtual Assistant business but you don’t know where to start?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, procrastinating and struggling to get started. If you don’t have a clue where to get clients and you wonder whether anyone would even pay you for the skills you have, you’re in the right place!

Having a successful VA business can be a dream come true. More freedom over your schedule, you can set your own hours and choose your own rates. No more boss to answer to. More family time and you can even be location independent.

Becoming a VA gives you the potential to earn more money whilst helping others and doing something you truly love. You can make a meaningful contribution, supporting other business owners to become successful.

But getting there can be a nightmare. Especially when you’re starting from scratch and trying to figure it out all by yourself!

Being a Virtual Assistant can be lonely. Our members tell us one of the things they value the most is having regular support from the community.

Solopreneur Overview:

Perfect for the brand new VA. This will suit you if you’re just getting started and you need support to get your business off the ground.

Step by step guidance (in our library of training resources) to get the legalities of your VA business in place, get out of overwhelm, launch and get clients.

A monthly training video and workbook on a specific topic to help you build your business. (Monthly topics will be sequential and take you step by step through the process of building a VA business).

A monthly group coaching call with our resident Business Coach to help you scale your business. You can bring your most pressing questions and get personal coaching & support.

Unparalleled support from inside our thriving community, plus access to our private Facebook group where you can ask your questions and get answers in real time. No need to ever feel ‘alone’ in your VA journey again.

Access all the members only articles and resources on our website.

Additionally remember you can access our FAQs section on the site (a database of all the most commonly asked questions from Virtual Assistants, along with the answers) at any time, so no more sitting at home behind your laptop feeling stuck!

Access to ‘The Reading Room’ where you can pop in and connect with other VAs at any time of the day (BETA. Someone may or may not be there when you log in as we build this feature up).

Real words from real members.

Don’t take our word for it..

I Got a Full Schedule of Clients!

The absolute best thing I got from joining The VA Cafe Online was that I connected with some brilliant VAs all over the world.

I applied to a work-from-home role. It took 2 weeks of waiting and when I heard nothing, I reached out again. My motivation to get away from corporate was so big that I wasn’t gonna take no for an answer: Finally, he replied and said he that felt I was more appropriate for an even bigger role than the one I applied to! I was stunned (but happy).

That was my first full-time VA role, and now I’m fully booked. I actually have a small team of VAs working under my care!

At VACO, everyone is supportive and approachable. There are no titles or experts – everyone treats each other with mutual respect. The VACO community is a great place to learn and to build up the confidence that newbie and even already-VAs need. I strongly recommend joining the community.

When I first started out as a VA, I was unsure of my abilities to be able to do the work and provide a good service to clients. I was learning so much new information and was so overwhelmed that I felt alone in the world of VA’s. Then I received an amazing opportunity to work with VA Café Online. With this opportunity I have worked with some amazing people and have learned how groups like this collaborate with each other to get the job done. Now I have co-workers I can seek help from if needed and have gained more confidence in myself and what I can do for other clients.

VA Café Online has provided me with the tools I need to set up my own business website and social media pages like LinkedIn and Facebook to get my name out there. I am also gaining more confidence working in WordPress, Canva and other software tools and I continue to learn more every day.

VA Café Online has provided me with much support and knowledge. Everyone is so friendly and helpful and I am truly grateful for this opportunity to work with such a great group.

Starting a business can be one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. Not only do you have to research and follow all the legal and accounting aspects of setting up a business, but you also have to learn to market yourself and trust in your own skills and abilities.

Early in my journey of reading and researching how I could actually get started, I realized that I do not have to do it all on my own. This realization prompted me to join a few Facebook groups and this is where I found the VA Cafe Online.

Being a founding member of VA Cafe Online opened up a new door into a different world. The chance to get to know other VA’s from all over the world and the opportunity to broaden my existing business skills into doing digital marketing; social media management, writing blog articles and learning design principles in Canva. It’s been instrumental to me gaining the confidence in taking the first step and starting to market myself.

One of the key lessons I learned from being part VACO’s founding group, is to take one day at a time. Learning new skills and setting up a business can be overwhelming and lonely. Some days will be harder than others, but being part of the VA Cafe Online makes it all easier.

The (Painful) Gap Between the Dream and the Reality

We’re not here to mislead you. At times this journey can be tough – really tough!

Some people out there would have you believe that it’s as easy as setting yourself up with an online business and suddenly it’s all ‘new clients and $10k months’.

In our collective experience, this isn’t the case for the vast majority of people. It can be frustrating – not to mention downright harmful to your self-esteem – when you have unrealistic expectations and then the reality doesn’t live up to them. Perhaps you’ve felt like that yourself.

Maybe you’ve compared yourself to others and found yourself to be lacking. You may have tried to build an online business before, without success.

You may even be close to giving up on your dream.

DON’T!

We’ve been there. We understand how it feels and we want you to know, it’s not your fault. Building a successful VA business is not as easy as those slick posts on Facebook would have you believe. It takes time, grit, persistence and the right guidance and support, and that’s just for starters.

What It’s Really Like When You Go It Alone

Here’s how it REALLY goes when you start an online business:

You set yourself up as a Virtual Assistant. You get really excited.

Then you realize you don’t know where to start so you read around online. There’s a LOT of information.

You become very overwhelmed.

With your head swimming, you start trying to work out what kind of VA you should be. What niche should you choose?

Someone you care about says it’s a terrible idea and you start to doubt yourself.

You think “maybe it IS safer just to stick with my job” even though you HATE it.

You take an 8-week detour before getting back on track with your business.

Now, to build your website… Oh, but which platform?

Social media – Surely you need to be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube and Pinterest?

A few more weeks go by as you try to figure out where to focus your time and energy.

Finally, several months later you have things set up and you’re ready to launch. You let people know that you’re now ‘officially’ open for business.

You sit back waiting for the clients to come. BUT THEY DON’T – In fact, NOTHING HAPPENS!

You start waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering how you’re going to pay your bills.

Will this ever work? Can I really do it? Doubts creep in. You feel wretched and miserable. You hide away for a few weeks.

You manage to re-motivate yourself and double down. You have a ‘posting frenzy’ on social media. Now the clients will come, you’re sure of it.

But your hear… CRICKETS! Arghhhhh.

Defeated and feeling miserable, you wonder if this is really what ‘the dream’ is all about.

How We Can Help

We’re here to make sure that doesn’t happen to you because we’ve been there. We know all the pitfalls – that was us! And we found a solution to every. single. one. of the problems. We overcame them.

Since then we’ve helped other VAs build their businesses, more quickly and with much less pain.

There are specific things you can do which make the journey much easier and cut the timeline to success.

That’s what we’d like to share with you inside of our membership site. Would you like to join us?

Real words from real members.

Don’t take our word for it..

I Was Able to Quit My Job!

After 12 months of talking about it and getting the groundwork in place I set up my VA business in January 2018, but from that point, I didn’t take it very far. My full-time job put restrictions on my time and, not really needing the money, I was quite comfortable to just dream about the idea of ‘one day’ becoming a fully-fledged, self-employed virtual assistant working on my own terms.

In truth, I was at a crossroads and floundering. I had good skills, but not the confidence to believe that I could turn it into a business and get paid for it. I suffered all the usual ‘going it alone’ fears. During a train commute to work one day in February, I saw the VACO advert calling for volunteers to join them in building an online library resource and virtual coffee shop – Built by Virtual Assistants for Virtual Assistants, as the mantra goes. Intrigued I applied and to my disbelief was accepted.

So began the journey working and collaborating with a bunch of great people as we pooled our skills and resources. During this period with VACO I and many others discovered things about ourselves we only dared dream. Mine was a skill in writing and graphic design. Working for VACO gave me a lot of opportunities to use these skills and gain confidence. All the while Julie and Dawn were encouraging and supportive.

After several months I dared to do the transition. I went part-time in my city job and acquired my first client. After a month of working part-time as an employee, I resigned and my city job boss became my client on the agreement that I still travelled into the city and work in the office 3 days a week. To this, I agreed though it wasn’t my ideal situation and him not my ideal client. Fate played its hand and my (first) VA client, after just 3 weeks of working together asked me if I’d be interested in supporting one of his managers. This potentially gave me approximately 30 hours a week.

Naturally, I jumped at the chance and within 2 weeks I was able to ‘sack’ my city job. I have now started working full-time from home with 2 clients and several sub-contracting jobs under my belt. Without taking the ‘leap of faith’ and making that application to VACO along with the support and skills I gained working with them, I believe I would still be on that train commuting to the city job, dreaming of one day becoming a VA.

After being approved as a Founding Member (I couldn’t believe it!), I was assigned as the lead of the Marketing team, but as soon as I started I realized that it wasn’t my calling, so I asked to be transferred to the Designers bunch. I knew this position was the right for me, as I love sourcing and retouching photos.

I was never criticized for my decision. Quite the opposite. I was supported 100% and encouraged to do what I felt was most beneficial to me & the VA Cafe Online. Finally, I’d found my tribe!

After a couple of email exchanges with Dawn, it really hit me: I was dealing with a human being that had a very big project to tackle. And I was already part of it! And how I’ve learned! Not only did I have the opportunity to put my marketing and photo retouching skills into practice, I am also helping to build a place where emerging VAs feel safe.

I also got the chance to learn & use apps (Asana, Slack, and Zoom) that otherwise, I would have never heard of. I definitely recommend the VA Cafe Online because it is an online resource built for VAS, by VAs.

Let’s say you don’t have a clue about how to get your first client. VACO has your back on that. You can also learn how to run an email campaign or create social media graphics for your clients or ask all the questions you have about how to create the business you want.

I have never felt I was left aside or that I am competing against my fellow Founding Members. The second best thing is that VACO helped me fine-tune my offerings to my future clients: graphics for social media and lead magnets, and in a near future article writing!

I came here with a couple of skills I wanted to put into practice: psycho marketing and photo retouching.

Now, after five months as a Founding Member, I am really glad I took the plunge and discovered a couple of other things that I love to do and that will help my future clients immensely!

VACO is my first client and Dawn, our Founder, has a vision of it, and it is my duty to fulfill that vision through my work, no matter if I hate some of the brand colors or if they chose an image that I consider is not as relevant as my winner.

Yes. The most important lesson I have learned from VACO is to leave my ego behind.

Irina Burciaga Aquilar

A Successful VA Business of Your Own

It IS possible to create a successful business as a Virtual Assistant.

How do we know?

Because we’re a group of VAs who’ve done it!

If we can do it so can you.

More of our community are ‘popping up’ each day to tell us about their success – members are sharing stories about new clients and travel, and of designing a business that’s a perfect fit for them.

Bridging The Gap

Our members tell us that being part of a community of people who know exactly what you’re going through makes all the difference to their life as a Virtual Assistant. Having that support from people who ‘get it’ is one of the make or break factors in your success as a VA.

Our members will support you when you’re down, celebrate with you when you win, advise you when you need it, work collaboratively and share job opportunities.

We KNOW there’s more than enough information out there already (too much in fact). So cutting through all the noise to getthe right guidance & training, from those who’ve already walked the path is essential. We’d like to take you by the hand and guide you, step by step through the process, all the way to business success.

Your path to success is unique and we’ll help you to WIN!!

Who We Are

We’re a group of around 30 VAs with varying levels of experience, from brand new to veteran. We’ve come together to create this membership site.

We’re invested in your success and we’re unique because we’re all VAs ourselves, so we know first hand what’s needed to help you get to where you want to be. All the resources in The Membership Site are created with this in mind.

What You Get:

Access to a supportive community who cares about your success.

Monthly group coaching calls to get laser coaching on your specific issues.

Design your ideal VA business – One that fits your unique lifestyle and brings you true joy and fulfillment.

Access to the ‘members only’ areas on the website to view exclusive training and resources.

Step by step guidance to take you through the process of setting up a VA business, including all the legalities and essentials of dealing with clients.

Help to distinguish and drop the ‘non-essentials’ so you free up time.

Training on how to market yourself without feeling ‘salesy’.

Support to move past ‘information overload’ and just focus on your very next steps.

A step by Step plan to help you get your first and next clients.

Inspiration to keep you motivated.

Loving support for when you’re ‘down’ – we’ve all been there on the entrepreneurial journey and a gentle ‘kick in the butt’ when you need it.

The opportunity to gain more flexibility in your life, for more time and money freedom.

Guidance on how to set your rates and earn what you really want to.

Occasional notifications when we see suitable client opportunities that we can share with you.

Wake up each day excited about your workday ahead!

The Doors Are Open!

Real words from real members.

Don’t take our word for it..

The VA Cafe Online has given me the opportunity to be part of a very supportive & encouraging group. It’s been a safe environment where asking questions is encouraged. No shaming or disrespectful posts are allowed.

Some of the benefits of being a Founding Member have been learning and practicing new skills such as FB scheduler and SocialBee, making connections and networking with virtual assistants in different countries, live coaching/mentoring calls, training on how to market my business effectively, & suggestions from other members on trainings, courses in our industry. I highly recommend VA Cafe Online to those who are new to working online!

The VA Cafe Online has been a wonderful community to be part of. I have had the opportunity to learn new skills in different platforms and this, in turn, has made me a better VA! The support is amazing and I feel very comfortable asking questions or being part of a discussion. I highly recommend the VA Cafe Online, it has everything you could possibly want and more! I love it!

I am SO grateful to be a part of this AMAZING VACO community of team players, hard workers, and lifetime friends. My confidence and skill sets have SOARED in social media, writing, and task management — all due to this UNIQUE opportunity and team! But, the best part is gaining more VA work from clientele! Thank you goes to my fearless leaders Dawn and Julie for choosing me as a founding member. It’s been a fantastic learning experience and skill builder!

Solopreneur Overview:

Perfect for the brand new VA. This will suit you if you’re just getting started and you need support to get your business off the ground.

Step by step guidance (in our library of training resources) to get the legalities of your VA business in place, get out of overwhelm, launch and get clients.

A monthly training video and workbook on a specific topic to help you build your business. (Monthly topics will be sequential and take you step by step through the process of building a thriving VA business).

A monthly group coaching call with our resident Business Coach to help you scale your business. You can bring your most pressing questions and get personal coaching & support.

Unparalleled support from inside our thriving community, plus access to our private Facebook group where you can ask your questions and get answers in real time. No need to ever feel ‘alone’ in your VA journey again.

Access all the members only articles and resources on our website.

Additionally remember you can access our FAQs section on the site (a database of all the most commonly asked questions from Virtual Assistants, along with the answers) at any time, so no more sitting at home behind your laptop feeling stuck!

Access to ‘The Reading Room’ where you can pop in and connect with other VAs at any time of the day (BETA. Someone may or may not be there when you log in as we build this feature up).

Wait – This Isn’t for Everyone!

If you want to get the most out of this experience you’ll need to be proactive. You must be willing to try new things and put into practice what you learn.

That doesn’t mean that you never have a ‘down’ day (we’re all human), it simply means that you’re willing to take responsibility for your own results, with our full backing, support, and experience behind you.

You’ll be expected to contribute to other members in the community and help them towards their success too.

As a community, we aim to lift each other up.

We have a no tolerance policy on ‘meanness’. We expect you to be respectful and kind to others in the VA Cafe Online membership site – our members support each other as we build thriving businesses together.

Most of all it means that you’re willing to put your dream ahead of your doubts.

We KNOW your dream business and lifestyle are within reach – they can happen for you, and it requires your commitment too.

Real words from real members.

Don’t take our word for it..

Working as a Founding Member of the VA Cafe Online has been an extremely rewarding experience. As a newer VA I found myself in a sea of overwhelming information. I knew the basics but lacked practice. My goals have always been to provide the best product possible but my confidence wasn’t what I needed it to be. I knew I needed a place to grow and ask questions, interact with other encouraging VAs, get going and make money. From the very beginning it was evident that this was the place to grow. Dawn Foster the Librarian/ Barista and Julie Ritchie make training videos regularly, answer questions promptly and are always so helpful. On top of that, our team of VAs is amazing – everyone supports one another and we have made connections that will last far beyond our time with the VA Cafe Online. Since working with this team, I have received support in interview, proposal and contract prep, encouragement in breaking out of my comfort zone, learning and refining my new VA skills and experience working on a team. This has been a great opportunity and I am so grateful to have the VA Cafe Online as a resource.

Amanda Witte

Working with VACO has been both exciting and eye-opening for me. I came into this experience with no experience as a VA. I was put in the writing group with no knowledge of how to write. I was happy with the couple of pieces I did but learned that it wasn’t something I wanted to pursue. I wanted to get more experience in creative since I am a creative person naturally, so I joined the designer’s group and thoroughly enjoyed making graphics and sourcing images. Without the support and guidance of the other members of VACO, I wouldn’t have been able to 1. learn that I’m actually not that bad at writing and 2.get the experience working with graphics and prove to myself that this is the route i want to take in furthering my skills as a VA. Overall, I have a better understanding of where I want to take my business and feel more confident in myself since working with VACO. Thank you, Dawn and Julie!

Cecile Evangelista

Being a part of the VACO group has been really great. It has been fantastic to connect with other VA’s starting out. What I’ve enjoyed most about being a part of VACO is being able to practice skills and having a network to discuss it with. It’s a very supportive and appreciative group and I have never been made to feel guilty for not giving more than I’m able to. I’ve also discovered where I want to spend my time and where I don’t. I started out being a part of the email marketing group, however because of time restraints on my personal schedule that is something I can’t pursue just yet. I have narrowed down though that I really do enjoy creating images. I’ve gotten to hone my skills through Canva and discovered the many sites to find beautiful images. Without VACO, it’s difficult to stay focused for there is SO much to distract you online! So I would say that VACO has helped me not only learn new technical skills but also learn how to better manage my time and draw up boundaries for work and personal life. A big shout out to Dawn Foster and Julie Ritchie!

Doors Closing Soon

We only open the doors to The VA Cafe Online Membership Site three times per year for a limited period of just a few weeks.

This isn’t some gimmicky marketing fad, it’s because we’re dedicated to providing the best experience for you. We like to put our attention into teaching and supporting you (rather than constantly enrolling new members).

It will cost you less than the price of a coffee and a pastry each week to become part of this community and kickstart your VA business today.